This Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through March 10)

COMPUTING

Google Thinks It’s Close to ‘Quantum Supremacy.’ Here’s What That Really Means.Martin Giles and Will Knight | MIT Technology Review
“Seventy-two may not be a large number, but in quantum computing terms, it’s massive. This week Google unveiled Bristlecone, a new quantum computing chip with 72 quantum bits, or qubits—the fundamental units of computation in a quantum machine…John Martinis, who heads Google’s effort, says his team still needs to do more testing, but he thinks it’s ‘pretty likely’ that this year, perhaps even in just a few months, the new chip can achieve ‘quantum supremacy.'”

INTERNET

How Project Loon Built the Navigation System That Kept Its Balloons Over Puerto RicoAmy Nordrum | IEEE Spectrum
“Last year, Alphabet’s Project Loon made a big shift in the way it flies its high-altitude balloons. And that shift—from steering every balloon in a huge circle around the world to clustering balloons over specific areas—allowed the project to provide basic Internet service to more than 200,000 people in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.”

DIGITAL MEDIA

The Grim Conclusions of the Largest-Ever Study of Fake NewsRobinson Meyer | The Atlantic
“The massive new study analyzes every major contested news story in English across the span of Twitter’s existence—some 126,000 stories, tweeted by 3 million users, over more than 10 years—and finds that the truth simply cannot compete with hoax and rumor.”

AUGMENTED REALITY

Magic Leap Raises $461 Million in Fresh Funding From the Kingdom of Saudi ArabiaLucas Matney | TechCrunch
“Magic Leap still hasn’t released a product, but they’re continuing to raise a lot of cash to get there. The Plantation, Florida-based augmented reality startup announced today that it has raised $461 million from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign investment arm, The Public Investment Fund…Magic Leap has raised more than $2.3 billion in funding to date.”

TECHNOLOGY & SOCIETY

Social Inequality Will Not Be Solved by an AppSafiya Umoja Noble | Wired
“An app will not save us. We will not sort out social inequality lying in bed staring at smartphones. It will not stem from simply sending emails to people in power, one person at a time…We need more intense attention on how these types of artificial intelligence, under the auspices of individual freedom to make choices, forestall the ability to see what kinds of choices we are making and the collective impact of these choices in reversing decades of struggle for social, political, and economic equality. Digital technologies are implicated in these struggles.”

Singularity Hub chronicles technological progress by highlighting the breakthroughs and issues shaping the future as well as supporting a global community of smart, passionate, action-oriented people who want to change the world.

Republish this article for free in any language, online or in print, under the Creative Commons license CC BY-ND 4.0. Learn more about republishing.

Republish

You are free to republish this article in any language, online or in print, under the Creative Commons license CC BY-ND 4.0. By republishing this content you agree to comply with the Singularity Hub Republishing Guidelines.

When republishing, please do not edit the contents of the article, ensure that you attribute the author and acknowledge that the article was originally published on Singularity Hub. Please contact us with any questions.

To republish this article, copy the HTML code below and paste it to your CMS. Please do not remove the pixel counter.